anyway, today's material was a bit of (very) general background on experimental design, followed by -- in my opinion -- just enough set theory and probability calculus to get us all into trouble, but probably not enough to get us back out again. hmmm. i wondered to myself as i was reading it over again last night just how central these topics were going to be in the rest of our 'primer' of (mostly) regular old parametric stats. i started looking up the terms they chose to boldface (e.g. 'complex events,' 'proper subset,' 'conditional probability') in the index and, curiously enough, most of them don't appear there at all. and most of those few that do appear (e.g. 'venn diagram') only come back up mostly in passing in a later chapter. except 'independence,' of course.
so, given G&E's bold statements on the first page:
In this chapter, we develop basic concepts and definitions required to understand probability and sampling.... The concepts in this chapter lay the foundations for the use and understanding of statistics....i'm curious to see how (and if) they link these back in in later chapters. (note my skeptical tone).
3 comments:
Thanks for posting the link to the Atlas complex paper - it's very interesting. I've struggled with those same questions/problems in some of the classes I've taught - how to get students to speak up and be involved. I'm impressed with the fluidity of the discussions in this class so far - involving both grad students and undergrads - and plan to incorporate some of these techniques/styles in my own teaching.
:) Nicole
It certainly is refreshing to see a different style of teaching and it will be interesting to see how the blogs and the wiki progress throughout the course. This is my first time, posting my thoughts on the web. I have read blogs before but I guess I have just not been motivated enough to get enaged in the conversation. Perhaps, this course will not only teach me how to do statistics but also encourage me to spend more time writing and interacting with online debates.
thanks for these! positive comments are always welcome :) but remember, if you have a critique, you can always post anonymously as well (if you care to).
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